deny children intimate contact if she would be of any service to them. The first fifteen minutes of the day is the time for such contact, for companionship, unconscious direction, and subtle suggestion. It is the time to bring into the classroom the sunlight, the freedom, and the naïveté of the outdoors. It is the time to start observations, questions, and reflections. It is the time to set definite problems of self-government, and to establish a tradition in the room which will become like the air one breathes, and which will be the pride of every individual.

Where it is possible, assign a few morning tasks; a committee allowed to come in before school to look things over, to fix the erasers and chalk, to feed the pets and water the flowers, takes on a pride of ownership and responsibility which establishes moral attitudes. Let it be a privilege to contribute to the general comfort in this way, and allow no one's name to appear on such a committee who has not a good weekly record.

The morning exercise is the time to establish standards of cleanliness, and persistence in good physical habits in regard to sleep, food, and elimination. It should foster respect for private property, a pride in ownership, and a measure of personal responsibility toward the general conduct of the school. Every child should have a pride in being dependable and self-reliant. These are the things that build the morality of childhood, and all the preaching in the world will never make up for the unconscious influence of the teacher during this period of intimate confidence.

Children need ideals, not punishment. It is the teacher's fault when the boys and girls are dirty, slouchy, and generally unkempt. The boy who knows that there is some one who will look for and expect clean hands and face soon sets a new ideal for himself. A crooked part in the hair,

and islands of dirt still clinging around his eyes and nose, will testify to his first conscious struggles. It is worth while for the teacher to be vigilant, for the beautiful, clean body is a safeguard against an unclean mind. Make a standard, then, for the children to live up to, not a rule but an ideal, - and watch the crude scramble to reach it. You cannot command children all the time, but you can by suggestion, interest, and encouragement set the tide of a whole. room surging toward a desired end. The dirtiest boy in the room will astonish you some morning by appearing desperately clean, with a flower in his buttonhole.

Little children must be led to the fulfillment of their possibilities through a firm faith in the unselfish affection of those who care for them. The child is controlled by love. He understands love, for his heart is running over with it. It is incorporated into his being, for it was the force which first gave him life, and it is the energy which will continue to drive him on to excel himself.

The briefness and the informality of the morning exercise make it a tremendous influence in the life of the child. Pedagogy cannot be measured by hours or minutes, for a child often develops more in a moment of joyous personal contact than in hours of conscious teaching.

CHAPTER XXI

DISCIPLINE

After all, what is discipline? It is not rule, rote, and silence, but the establishment of a working attitude in one's classroom. What is disorder? It is only that which interferes with the progress or the comfort of any member of the class.

To maintain discipline (and according to the definition above it is absolutely essential to success) one must first study the health of the children. Discipline, if analyzed, would be found to include ventilation, light, heat, rest, and cleanliness. Discipline is unconsciously affected by environment; even the appearance of the room is an item of concern. A vase of beautiful flowers arranged with an eye to color and proportion may be made a source of control. Children are deeply sensitive to their surroundings, and may absorb disorder and irritability both from the teacher and the general atmosphere of the room in which they work. Orderly mental habits hover over the boy or girl who has orderly physical habits, and, other things being equal, the clean child in the clean, attractive room will be well behaved.

The apathy of the average classroom creates first a negative attitude and then open rebellion. Good discipline is a question of attitude. Children need positive direction, and the undirected pretense of study in the early grades, before the children are capable of independent study, is the breeding ground of discontent and immorality. We are forgetting that it is not learning how to read that counts, but learning

how to think and to study. The study periods of the primary-school child should be wisely directed, for the ability to study is the foundation of all later intellectual progress.

Obedience is not a birthright of children. It is not like the gold or silver spoon put into the mouth, but comes to them slowly, growing as they grow, until it becomes habitual to be law-abiding. Disobedience, likewise, is not inherent. It is frequently a good impulse turned in a wrong direction. Many children are not intentionally disobedient, but have a career of carelessness which results in absent-mindedness, a negative attitude toward obligations, and a general moral incapacity. Such a child can be made obedient only by a patient rebuilding of habits. One should not put the same exactions upon him as upon the child who comes from the orderly home. The latter has absorbed the power to obey with his mother's milk. Regular physical habits of nourishment and sleep have laid the foundation for his orderly moral response. The other child must undo the habit of five or six years of shiftlessness, to take on the habits of order and control. Only the wise and sympathetic teacher can help him to do this. He must be led from one success to another, with a consciousness of victory that is pleasurable. The habitually disorderly child, who is plunged into the school routine and expected to respond to all of its regulations at once, feels a sense of defeat that results in an antagonistic attitude toward school and hampers his progress. We are learning to grade children a little more wisely according to their mental power, and we must now learn to grade them morally.

The conventional morality of childhood is not a thing complete in itself. It is, after all, only the past habitual response of the individual to law and order. It is the result of training, not of inheritance. The child who comes to school unruly must therefore be looked upon not with dislike but simply

as deficient. He should be treated with the same consideration as the child who has missed a half year by sickness, or who has been moved about from place to place and is behind his grade in specific subjects. Make the problem in discipline for the individual child within his capacity, just as you do his reading or writing lesson; then see that he solves it.

Moral power must grow as mental power does, with the opportunity to use it. The gospel of good discipline lies in first making the child willing to do the right thing. The teacher's will, however strong, cannot control the child's conduct; he must do that himself, and he will do it if he is permitted to see that good conduct is a personal possession that works to his own advantage. Children's standards are not altruistic; they are guided by consequences, and legitimate punishment should deal with such personal and practical consequences.

Children are considered disobedient when there is absolutely no conscious desire to disobey. A whole army of disorderly habits, laying siege to motor impulses, must make disorderly behavior automatic. The study of the psychology of habit opens our eyes to the fact that disobedience is as reflex in some children as their respiration.

Again, many children are hard to control because, in a kind of self-defense from inopportune and incessant correction, they have learned to close their ear traps and shut out all remonstrance. They frequently do not hear directions and suggestions. Commands do not penetrate their central nervous system, but merely slide along that proverbial path from ear to ear. Obedience is then often a mere matter of concentration, attention; and if you will observe the disobedient child at his work, he is equally unable to concentrate there. The question is, then, What kind of correction does he